


and like a storm in july, this too shall pass, my darling

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst?, Coma, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:52:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall's been sleeping for seven and a half months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and like a storm in july, this too shall pass, my darling

**Author's Note:**

> Any italicized paragraphs are tidbits into their past and are not necessarily in chronological order, they just crop up as Zayn's memory is jolted by certain things.. :)

It’s just. _He’s so pale_. Niall’s always been pale, but in a lovely way like clouds. Like porcelain. Like the silk soft down on a swan’s wings, glowing as if the sun itself shines from his pores.

But this.

His skin is tinged in grey-blue and it might be beautiful if it weren’t so dull - _more cygnet than swan_ \- almost lifeless. Niall is almost lifeless. He’s significantly quieter and subdued, the thrum in his bones and the electricity in his veins stilled, heartbeat slow and deliberate. But he’s alive and breathing without a tube shoved up his nose and _awake_ , so the colour of his skin or the fact he’s tired after sleeping for seven months isn’t very important right now. Nothing except the fact that he is awake - and astoundingly healthy for someone in his circumstances - is important. Zayn tries not to cringe when he notices Niall’s once shining blue eyes aren’t quite shining anymore. 

Because none of it is important now. _He’s awake_ and smiling and talking to Zayn before he’s even over the threshold of the door to their private room with the apple green walls.

“They…they say you love me,” He’s coy, something he never used to be; looking down at his fingers where they rest in his lap, knotting and unknotting. He bites his lip, chances a look at Zayn, “and that I love you back,”. Zayn nods curtly, sits down heavily into the uncomfortable chair he’s been sleeping in for seven and a half months, by now quite used to the lumps and bumps that constitute ‘ _modern design_ ’. He’s nicknamed the plum leather and mahogany monstrosity ‘Lumpy’ and despite the assuming affection, gives it a good swift kick in the leg if he can’t sleep or he gets angry at Niall or the vending machine closest to the room doesn’t have coffee so he has to walk all the way to the canteen.

“Yeah, a whole fucking lot,” he replies, toeing off the too small and too white Supras that haven’t left his sight, thus far. He swings his heel into Lumpy’s leg for good measure.

He doesn’t think Lumpy minds when he gets a boot (or a white Supra, sometimes a socked heel if he’s feeling generous) to the shin, he’s just _a chair_ , afterall, but for the moment he bottles everything up. He takes a sip of the bitter coffee (bitter because he’s too embarrassed to ask for sugar, seeing as how the canteen staff’s first few meetings with him consisted of him telling them he didn’t like sugar and now he’s too far gone to admit he’d bought it – one for him, one for Niall - out of habit for a _sleeping_ Niall) and thinks he’s been bottling things up _for the moment_ for seven and a half months.

 

_-_

 

_“I think I love you, Niall Horan,”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Yeah,”_

_“I think I love you too,”_

 

-

 

“Soulmates. They called us soulmates,” Niall whispers, fluffing up his pillows before settling down deep into his cocoon of patchwork quilts and throwovers that his mother had insisted he’d needed to stay warm while he was asleep, because even though he was technically paralyzed for the first five months after the accident, he could ‘ _still feel the bloody chill in this goddamn air-conditioned room_ ,’ . He looks over to Zayn, curiosity dancing in his eyes, and it’s a little endearing and a little unnerving because it seems as though Niall is looking right through into him, like he’s trying to find the little piece of himself that’s latched onto Zayn and made a home.

For a small second, Niall’s eyes lighten and Zayn thinks he’s found it.  But then maybe that’s just a trick of the light that seeps through the half closed blinds.

“Yeah? I think we might be,” Zayn tells him, propping his feet up on the very edge of the bed. He half smiles, stretching out his too tight muscles, stretching out the years that have aged him in the span of just over half a year, stretching out the skin that feels like somebody else’s.

“Really? Why?” Niall bites his lip again, burrows deeper into the blankets and clutches them at his chest, childlike, and something shoots up and back down the length of Zayn’s ribs. His fingers roam over the scar there.

_-_

_A six year old Niall all inquisitive and eager eyes, obscenely wide and unnaturally blue like a Furby, and bottom lip worried to almost bleeding between his teeth when he’d spotted a fresh cut on a school trip to the local pool._

_“My dad pushed me through the patio,”_

_“Really? Why?”_

_“He gets mad cuz I was born,”_

_Niall vowed to take care of Zayn, after that. Little six year old, bouncy flouncy sunshine and daisies Niall Horan, who walked through the fields behind his house for hours trying to find the end of a rainbow even when there wasn’t one out. Niall Horan who ate too many cookies on the school bus and preferred diplodocus over triceratops made a pinkie swear sitting on the edge of the pool with Zayn Malik. Zayn Malik the quiet, strange, raven haired tan skinned seven year old boy who liked finger paints and wore Niall’s armbands and sat on the edge of the pool because he couldn’t swim yet and had a scar on his ribs because his Dad didn’t like him._

 

-

 

“It-it’s not that easy to explain,” And it’s not, is it? Not really. Not unless you’re Dawson Leery and damn Louis and his nineties teen angst television shows.

“Then show me,”

 

-

 

_“Show you? Ni-”_

_“If you’re telling the truth, show me,”_

_“Alright,”_

_Their first kiss is sticky with all the popcorn they’ve been eating and it’s clumsy with the experience they have yet to gain, being only twelve and thirteen respectively, and there’s perhaps too many teeth and not enough lips and a chastity reminiscent of a Disney film, but it’s full of truth and the promise of forever, and so much that words could never say._

_Later, they’re curled up on the couch, Niall’s head on Zayn’s chest, Zayn’s lips in Niall’s hair when they both yawn, knowing Niall’s mother will be angry that they didn’t make it to bed, but too tired to care anyway. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite, Zaynie…”_

 

-

 

“How?”

“The album,” Zayn’s eyebrows disappear beneath his fringe because well. Really? Although he’d secretly hoped that Niall would ask to see it sooner.

“Are you sure? The doc-”

“Fuck what the doctor says. It’s been nine fucking hours and I’m still clueless as to who you are and I hate it so screw trying to remember on my own. The others didn’t seem to care what the doctor thought. I want to see the pictures. You seem like you’d be worth remembering,”

 

-

 

_“Just…don’t forget me, yeah?”_

_“Hmm. I suppose. You seem like you’d be worth remembering,”_

_“Twat!” Zayn punched him in the shoulder, enough to make him lose his balance, but there wasn’t really any strength behind it. Niall was a tease and Zayn hit him for it. It worked well._

_“Oh shut up. There’s this really cool thing they invented. I think it’s called a…mobile?” Niall fished into his pocket for his own mobile, waving it in front of Zayn’s face and laughing that laugh he did that made Zayn feel all fluttery and disgusting._

_“Fuck off! You’d better call every weekend,”_

_“I’ll be calling every day if I can manage it,” Niall shrugged then, yanked at Zayn’s belt loop and kissed the underside of his chin. Zayn was taller now, all wiry and small shouldered where Niall was bulky and broad but still as thin as ever._

_“All the way from Ireland? Won’t that cost like…loads?”Zayn rested his chin on Niall’s head, pouted where Niall couldn’t see because Zayn’s ‘pout is ridiculously sexy’ and Niall would miss his flight trying to kiss it off him._

_“So?”_

 

-

 

“Yeah, nine hours, Nialler…” and at the confused expression that flashes to determined within a second, “Um, here…” Zayn reaches under the bed, hands the photo album with the daisies and the four leaf clovers and the compass that points North, to Niall while trying in vain to keep his smile genuine. It feels too big for his face and he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes, doesn’t make them crinkle the way Niall likes. But it’s the best he’s got and Niall doesn’t know different.

“Come on, _soulmate._ Don’t sit in that lumpy chair, come lie with the love of your life on his state of the art tempur mattress,” Niall reaches over himself to pat the space behind his bum, wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and a little of the thrum in his bones buzzes in Zayn’s ears. His smile reaches his eyes but it doesn’t stop him shitting out a brick house,

“Um…” and the nerves make his voice quiver, as if his lips have suddenly forgotten how to form anything intelligible and with more than one syllable.

“Oh come on, mate, I’ve been spooned by a guy before,” says Niall easily, sitting up and crossing his arms, “The needles and shit putting you off? Harry didn’t seem to mind,” he smiles small, hopeful.

“ _Oh_ ,”

“Yeah, that fella’s pretty hands on, Louis too”

“Yeah. They are,”

“ ‘parrently I’m off limits, but the two of ‘em took advantage while you were getting that awful canteen coffee, told me all sorts while using me like a bloody climbin’ frame, course Liam wasn’t too happy…just huffed and pouted a lot,”

“Sounds like them,” Zayn allowed himself a mirthless chuckle. He really was _trying_ not to dampen the mood. But of course he wasn’t succeeding.

“Does it?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t want anyone acting any different ‘round me, that’s all. I’m still me... _somewhere_. I’m still a person. M’not an eggshell,” Niall put on an obscene pout and giggled, eyes lightening again, and Zayn’s smile fit snugly on his face.

“We know - we just - well at first - and the doc, y’know,”

“Yeah, well I’ll have to get used to it all again. May aswell be sooner rather than later, right?” Yes. The sooner the better. Anyone who doesn’t become accustomed to Harry’s roaming hands and Louis’ constant jokes in prickly situations and Liam’s tendency to turn tomato at even the mention of anything remotely over PG is doomed.

“Yeah,”

“So. Spoon me?” Niall asked, again patting the space behind his bum and waggling his eyebrows. Zayn couldn’t help smiling for the fiftieth time in nine hours.

“Course,”

 

-

 

“What’s this one from?”  They must be in their early teens at least, Zayn’s hair is flat and swoopy and Niall’s is peroxide bright. Their eyes are shining and they’re smiling so big that Zayn thinks they must have had at least a couple of beers by this point. They’re all in sharp suits. Harry on one knee at Zayn’s feet with a corsage in his hands and his bowtie loose around his neck, Liam’s arm slung around Niall’s shoulders, mouth pressed to his neck. Their first school dance.

“This? This is the night I asked you to be mine forever,”

“Y-you proposed?”

“Sort of, yeah,”

“What did you say?”

 

-

 

_Zayn pressed his champagne soaked lips to the shell of Niall’s ear as they swayed beneath the tacky disco ball. Niall’s breath hitched. “Niall James Horan.  For better or worse, through blessing or curse, from young to old and weak to bold, I take your heart,” he laced his fingers with Niall’s, smiling soft, pressed a kiss to his cheek as he finished, “and your hand to hold.”_

_“And I take yours,” Niall replied, reaching up on his tiptoes to rest his chin on Zayn’s shoulder._

_They stayed like that until Niall’s toes tingled and they’d swayed their way through Always, and Everything I Do._ _“Forever?” Zayn whispered a little while later when they were sat at one of the tables lining the walls of the sports hall._

_“Forever,” Niall said._

 

-

 

“Forever…” Niall repeated, reaching around to nuzzle into Zayn’s chest, before yawning silently, “Don’t let the bed bugs bite, Zaynie…”


End file.
